The latest monthly migration stats came out yesterday. This is a graph of migration just between Australia and NZ. The trend is clear.

Now Labour has joined NZ First in saying we have too many migrants, I want to know how they plan to stop Aussies moving here, considering we have a mutual right to work and live in each other’s countries. Will they rip up CER?

Whale points out that Labour are now backing off their pledge to reduce net migration to under 15,000. Mainly because it is impossible. Residency visas are actually down on 2008. You can not stop Kiwis returning home or Aussies moving here – and nor should we.

It’s amusing that just a year ago Labour was claiming too many Kiwis are leaving NZ. Now they’re effectively complaining too many are staying on!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 7:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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I’ve often wondered whether immigration quotas should be managed as a macroeconomic tool. Immigration policy settings may be adjusted up or down to manage the economy, but without much oversight. Surely we could set a quota under the points-based system, and then adjust it up or down depending on economic conditions and the likely benefit to the country? Maybe the reserve bank board could oversee this.

Arrivals from NZ citizens has hardly changed at all over 30 years – stable at about 25,000 per year. Arrivals from non-citizens used to be stable at about 20,000 a year, but it started going up substantially 20 years ago and is now 50,000 – 60,000 a year. So we have increased our baseline migrant numbers by about 35,000 a year for the last 20 years. No wonder we have a housing crisis! The latest data seems to stop in 2011 – anyone got updates?

Every single day, Labour seems hell-bent on showing not only how utterly incapable it would be as a prospective government, and it reinforces that fact every time one of its spokespeople opens their mouths and airs unmistakeable absence of competence and intellect.

Kiwis have in the past migrated to QLD with experiance as doctors, teachers, police, engineers, carpenters, chefs ect – who also speak english, play or follow sport, socialise & drink beer. They immediatly add value as needed specialists. They also cost Australia/QLD taxpayers nothing to train. They fit in as they should.

That can’t be said of a large proportion of immigrants that come into NZ or Australia. These people have poor skills at best. Use tax funded government resources to learn a basic life skill – english – and then maybe a retail, hospitality or forklift driving course. They add no immediate value. Pay nothing or little in tax. Add no value to the economy -other than working cheaply for current businesses to maintain their current market share- and remain struggling for a decade or more as renters, casual workers, and neutral taxpayers. They are definitly not ‘a much needed resource’.

I do support the idea of unskilled and helpless refugees immigrating to NZ – but most others in this day and age should have to hold a hard science degree as the benefits have to be mutual.

I too support the idea of unskilled and helpless refugees immigrating but only after all the unskilled and helpless New Zealanders (yeah I’m looking at you, Far North & east Cape) are working, there are more than enough jobs for them in the South Island, or would be if we took all the Filipinos and South Americans out of the equation.

There should be room for at least two German immigrants once the obese lying one has gone

So much for Labour. Now, onto National. Its view is that, despite a massive increase in NZers and Aussies entering the country, there’s no reason to consider reducing the numbers immigrating from other places, eg the Third World. Wouldn’t it be nice if John Key had the courage to actually state that view explicitly for the country’s voters?

No matter how much you try and spin it or focus on the the marginal economic benefits (and conveniently ignore the inflationary pressures), this large scale social transformation is being imposed on us by both parties and is dramatically changing the culture of the country. Large parts of the cities we grew up are now unrecognisable and increasingly large numbers of people can’t even engage in civil society because they can’t speak the language of the nation. This is quite understandably making people anxious about what kind of country we are giving to our children and grandchildren particularly with the rise in Islamism in this country which Whaleoil addressed yesterday but many won’t even acknowledge is going to be a huge problem in the coming years and is so easy to avoid.

Now the author of this piece like accusing Labour & NZ First of “racism” but surely racism is a natural response and entirely normal?

The reason that racism is normal is that humans are social animals. We form social groups and race and xenophobia are natural responses to defend the social group. You can’t fight nature, which has given us a biological allegiance to those who are similar. It’s part of our natural existence. We cam absorb small numbers of immigrants each year who assimilate into the NZ culture but the scale and extent of what our social engineers in power are doing is unprecedented and without a mandate.

If you outlaw race and xenophobia in your own ethnic group (as we have done), then other ethnic groups will assimilate you (which is what is happening to us) and ultimately our group and culture will disappear.

So therefore moderate racism and xenophobia appear to be quite natural, entirely normal and nothing for anyone to get too hot and bothered about because otherwise our nation divided upon itself will no longer be a nation and will eventually fall.

New Zealanders living in Australia, despite paying taxes don’t get the same access to government services that Australians do.
Maybe now that New Zealand is the place for Australians to come to, maybe we should do the same back.
Bet we won’t though.

Don’t worry when the Labour Green alliance sees a problem they will come up with a half baked policy to “fix” it. A hefty tax on returning kiwis and Aussies is just like the sort of policy they will come up with.

bc – Yeah o.k kiwis who move to OZ do pay the taxes -but then they do have the right to take up citizenship- yes it does cost a couple of grand to do so and takes a while – but then you are offsetting that cost against the gains you will get from then having access to government funded services.

These people are really complaining about the fact that ‘aussies who go to NZ don’t get treated like that’- which is not stopping kiwis from gaining aussie citizenship to improve ‘their lot’ in OZ. It’s really a lazy arguement that they putting forward to better themselves.

Rusty Crow and others who were ‘out of Aust’ on Feb 21 2001 -for the day- or longer[Some oz kiwis were only doing their shift on oil rigs out of australia’s territory.] are really the only people who have been hard done by from the changes.

Labour’s plan to effectively stop immigration from the Pacific is going down like a cup of cold sick with the Pacifica people in South Auckland. Add in that Labour want them to work another 1000 days to get a pension and you will understand why many are considering changing their vote to the party that will make doctors visits and prescriptions free for their children – that party is National.

We are doing well at the moment but the time will come when our economy turns down just as the Australian economy has now. We might then be glad of the additional workers we are getting now. There are always upsides and downsides to every turn of events such as pressure on housing. We just have to cope.

So we all know that Labour, the Greens, and NZ First are targeting Asian immigrants specifically. On one hand they’re obsessed with remembering 1981 and the Springbok tour, and even 33 years later opposition to the tour is “evidence” of moral virtue. On the other hand, they’re happy to run for election on the basis of anti-Asian and anti-immigrant sentiment. So maybe the 2014 election should be the new benchmark for race-based virtue… For the next 30 years we’ll ask people if they voted for the racist anti-Asian parties or not, and shun them if they admitted to voting for the Greens.

I can’t imagine the Pasifika community is too impressed with the anti-immigrant parties.

I’m happy to admit that I think immigration is a great thing. NZ is a much more interesting place then it was when I grew up, and immigrants are a big part of this. I like their food, their festivals, their work-ethic, and their women. I like the way that they’ve helped turn Auckland in to an international city. I like the way they’ve generally assimilated so their children are just normal Kiwi kids. Shame on Labour, the Greens, and NZ First for trying to turn NZ back to the 1970s.

@davidp
“I’m happy to admit that I think immigration is a great thing. NZ is a much more interesting place then it was when I grew up, and immigrants are a big part of this. I like their food, their festivals, their work-ethic, and their women. I like the way that they’ve helped turn Auckland in to an international city. I like the way they’ve generally assimilated so their children are just normal Kiwi kids”

The MSM and racist parties will have you to believe that children of migrants from Caucasian countries will grow up to be Kiwi. Children of Chinese / Asians will grow up to be Asian. How can they assimilate if they look different?

Dime – my understanding is that Aussies are entitled to all our benefits, when they come here. That makes us a soft touch in my view. We can complain about how Oz excludes Kiwis who go there, from a range of benefits; but that is fully Australia’s right as a sovereign nation, to decide. But we should seriously consider having an equivalent regime for Aussies who come here, especially now, when you can see the immigration flows possibly reversing. We certainly should keep CER free entry and work entitlements in each other’s countries.

I heard on the radio this morning that we need more working-age immigrants to provide taxes to pay for NZ’s aging population. I hope that our pension/health system is not a pyramid-type arrangement that depends on an ever-widening base to keep it running, or else we are in for a rough future.

Two points

1. Immigrants get old, too
2. Immigrants may wish to bring their aging parents to NZ. They can more easily do so under the present rules if they happen to be the only child. Now class… which great nation has a high proportion of single-child families?

To get Jobseeker Support, must be – “a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident who has lived here for at least two years at any one time since becoming a citizen or permanent resident, and who normally lives here.”

I heard on the radio this morning that we need more working-age immigrants to provide taxes to pay for NZ’s aging population.
—

.6 Population ageing
Increases in net migration are sometimes suggested as a solution to the problems created
by population ageing. While temporary inward migration may help mitigate the effects of
population ageing, those migrants who become permanent residents will also eventually
retire and increase the old-age dependency ratio (see Figure 2). Overall, the present
pattern of net migration reinforces population ageing, as emigrants tend to be younger
97
than immigrants.

In looking at results for countries and regions including Japan, Germany and Europe, the
United Nations (2001) concluded that in order to materially mitigate the impacts of
population ageing, flows would need to be many, many times existing population inflows
from migration. Jackson (2014) is presently estimating the extent of inward migration flows
that would be necessary to compensate for population ageing and outward migration in
New Zealand. While exact numbers are not yet available, the same pattern holds: inflows
will need to be many times existing levels to make a material impact.
Population ageing is occurring worldwide and competition for skilled migrants is expected
to increase. New Zealand has some attractive features for potential migrants, but there
are also negative factors to contend with, including distance and declining economic
performance relative to other traditional destination countries. Taken together, these
points suggest that migration is unlikely to “solve” population ageing.

The most expensive housing market in North America is not where you’d think. It’s not New York City or Orange County, California, but Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, Vancouver is a beautiful city—a thriving deep-water port, a popular site for TV and movie shoots. By all accounts, it is a wonderful place to live. But nothing about its economy explains why—in a city where the median income is only around seventy grand—single-family houses now sell for close to a million dollars apiece and ordinary condos go for five or six hundred thousand dollars. “If you look at per-capita incomes, we look like Reno or Nashville,” Andy Yan, an urban planner at the Vancouver-based firm Bing Thom Architects, told me. “But our housing prices easily compete with San Francisco’s.”
When price-to-income or price-to-rent ratios get out of whack, it’s often a sign of a housing bubble. But the story in Vancouver is more interesting. Almost by chance, the city has found itself at the heart of one of the biggest trends of the past two decades—the rise of a truly global market in real estate.
//
The globalization of real estate upends some of our basic assumptions about housing prices. We expect them to reflect local fundamentals—above all, how much people earn. In a truly global market, that may not be the case. If there are enough rich people in China who want property in Vancouver, prices can float out of reach of the people who actually live and work there. So just because prices look out of whack doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bubble. Instead, wealthy foreigners are rationally overpaying, in order to protect themselves against risk at home. And the possibility of losing a little money if prices subside won’t deter them. Yan says, “If the choice is between losing ten to twenty per cent in Vancouver versus potentially losing a hundred per cent in Beijing or Tehran, then people are still going to be buying in Vancouver.”

The challenge for Vancouver and cities like it is that foreign investment isn’t an unalloyed good. It’s great for existing homeowners, who see the value of their homes rise, and for the city’s tax revenues. But it also makes owning a home impossible for much of the city’s population. And the tendency of foreign buyers not to inhabit investment properties raises the spectre of what Yan has called “zombie neighborhoods.” A recent study he did found that a quarter of the condos in a luxury neighborhood called Coal Harbour were vacant on census day.